- This topic has 25,813 replies, 124 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I think when it comes to fandom, the important question to ask to understand it is why. Why do some people engage in a particular show in such a way yet other shows completely pass them by without batting an eyelid? Why does a show gain such a large fanbase yet another one doesn’t?
There are tons of reasons, and certainly the ones you pointed to. I think one of the biggest, for OUAT, is nostalgia. Not only for the Disney characters we all know and love but for “childhood,” even if we weren’t all children during Disney’s greatest eras (like the Disney Renaissance). Disney’s symbolic nature almost automatically invokes nostalgic feelings of childhood–of a time when we believed happy endings and magic not only *could* exist but *did* exist. Nostalgia is one of my favorite emotions because it’s caught between being good and bad. It’s a fond remembrance of days gone by but it’s also painful because you have to recognize that you’ll never get back to that state of being. Nostalgia literally, in Greek, means the pain from an old wound/longing for a “homecoming.” I think that’s what OUAT promised us at first: a chance to go back in time to watch these very classic, very old, very beloved tales (with a twist) that would allow us to escape back to childhood, to come “home” back to an age when we believed that magic was all around us, that happy endings could come to us, and that wishes do come true. That’s why S1 was so darn powerful–because we all recognized ourselves in the characters, be it the lonely orphan who was closed off after being rejected, the angry and scared woman who just wanted a happy ending, lovers separated by fate and circumstances, a father desperate to find his child….stories that were fantastical but grounded in human emotion and feelings that spoke to us with a promise that through magic, through faith, and through hope happy endings would come to them (and us by extension because of our ability to empathize with the characters).
I so much agree with this and this is why it is so painful, to me at least, to see this show turn into a huge mess.
[adrotate group="5"]"All your questions are pointless"
Thanks for the info on football, Slurpeez and Rainbow. This has been a stimulating discussion.
I heard something interesting in a podcast today and thought I’d throw it out there as we’ve been discussing bullying. Apparently there isn’t too much bullying in fanfiction communities. Is this even true? Or are the sites just very strictly moderated? Given the highly personal nature of fanfiction, I would have thought attacks would be common.
I heard something interesting in a podcast today and thought I’d throw it out there as we’ve been discussing bullying. Apparently there isn’t too much bullying in fanfiction communities. Is this even true? Or are the sites just very strictly moderated? Given the highly personal nature of fanfiction, I would have thought attacks would be common.
I don’t write fanfic so I’m not sure. But I find it both easy and not easy to believe. If it’s a fic with a couple I don’t like or a storyline that’s not interesting, I just skip over it. I don’t feel the need to read it and comment on it if I know I’m not going to find it compelling anyway. But, on the other hand, I have heard of mean spirited reviews–tearing apart the work and the author just for the simple fact that they chose to write about X instead of Y.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Yeah, I’ve only dabbled myself – just enough to scratch the surface. But the hosts are all old hands and they agreed about not having seen significant bullying. It is difficult to believe though. I know enough to know that there is enough quality in the fic world to get consumers hooked in the all the same ways we discussed above. Plus, psychologically speaking, it’d be even easier to hurl abuse at a nameless, faceless author than at a showrunner.
I think as RG said, if the story doesn’t interest you or if it’s all about a couple you don’t like, you just tend to skip over it. Because of this, there isn’t so much a clash of personalities. Fics let you categorise what they fall into eg are they humour, horror, romance etc. Plus add which characters it involves plus any pairings. So if you were writing a SF fic and categorised it as such the CSers would tend to avoid it and vice versa.
With the show, you don’t get any categories so you get those clashes. The CSF triangle splintered the OUAT fandom and its never recovered, its only broken down more as the show has progressed.
All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of FelixWith the show, you don’t get any categories so you get those clashes.
Yes exactly. As a die hard SF I can just skip CS stories. But I can’t just fast forward (well, during live viewing…) through the CS tv portions (because then I’d be left with only about 5 mins of “other” story….see what I did there?!)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I don’t know if these elements are the sole contributers to the fan behaviour described in the article. I’ll use a parallel sports situation to illustrate my point. I’m an avid cricket fan. In one cricket playing country, you see eerily similar examples of extreme fan behaviour. The entitlement is present, the death threats, effigy burning, house stoning, social media bullying and overidentification with the team to the point where even the slightest criticism is taken as an insult to national pride. The game of cricket, like the entertainment industry, has changed over the years (becoming more commercial) and fans from all countries frequent social media. Yet, this extreme behaviour is nowhere near as prevalent in other cricket playing countries. The point I’m trying to make is that it is driven by cultural and socio-political factors more so than technology. Now, getting back to the matter at hand – I’m not sure what fandom is like in countries other than the US. Would fans in countries like Norway, reputed to be laid-back, be as vocal or as passionate? Would countries that don’t have the same high rates of consumerism or entertainment consumption display the same entitlement or overidentification? Would countries where being vocal is not seen as desirable have such an engaged fan base? I don’t know. But I suspect not. I’m in no way intending to criticize American culture. Fandom can achieve some very positive things – more inclusivity and better representation for example. This too, has a cultural aspect. You can see the connection between the Elsa campaign and a culture that values freedom of expression, diversity and individualism. So my (tentative) conclusion is that fan behaviour is strongly influenced by culture, more so than technology and might be seen as a microcosm of the society it is based in. I also think that the article is being overly dramatic when it says that ‘fandom is broken’. If anyone does know about how fandom manifests itself in different countries and cultures, I’d be interested to hear about it. No doubt, each one would have its own quirks and bad behaviour.
I think that culture does have an effect on fandom and i think that what happens in America is pretty mild then what happens in other countries. I think about how soccer fans are in other countries, rioting, people dying at soccer games, kidnapping players. How musicians are chased through the airport in Brazil and people sing outside their hotel all night long, crying like lunatics. Obviously, the crazy that exists on the internet is something special, but i don’t think it can even be remotely assumed that they are all Americans. I am not saying there aren’t crazy Americans out there as mentioned in the articles that have been posted, there clearly are, and they are clearly on twitter and facebook and elsewhere spreading their insanity, but i just don’t think it is any different then insanity surrounding musicians or sports players in other countries. All am saying is that some of the crazy on the internet is not American.
Oh yes. I think producers/showrunner can be worse! Yes, no one should send death threats or bully in general but 9/10 of the people who do that aren’t going to actually do anything. They, like the article I linked points out, think that their tweet will never be read, or they’re just getting caught up in the fervor of other fans. The showrunners and writers are actually in control of the media piece at the end of the day. They can insert anything they want into the narrative either to silence critics or respond to backlash. Everyone remember the silly “Maybe we should have called him Baelfire” line in 401? After meeting with tons of backlash for naming baby Snowflake Neal, A and E have Prince Charming utter that line without any context, without any surrounding dialogue to explain the awkward line. It was pretty clearly a sarcastic remark to the fandom. And that’s what producers can do; use the media piece as a weapon which, in turn, seems to only fuel more anger and more vitriol from the fans.
Seriously, what is it with the writers making snide comments at the fandom in the show? What do they think they could possibly gain by doing that? That is just really frustrating for everyone watching the show. I don’t know if i have just never been as aware of a fandom as i have been of Ouat’s and their writers, but this show does that all the time in really rude and disrespectful ways. It is unimaginable to me what the writers are thinking when they do that.
All this talk about why fans get engaged in the show and if fans are entitled or not and the writers having all the power…
I believe that these writers are NOT ignoring the fans, and that is the problem. CS is direct fan-pandering swanqueen is fan pandering…
And lines like “we should have called him Bealfire” or making a scene where Hook “saves” Milah from a sexual preditor to shut up the people who associate him with rape culture.
Their story is unrecognizable anymore because the characters lost their luster.
You know how when you look at a painting and you see vivid colors all working together so beautifully to create a masterpiece with intricate detail? Imagine if the artist takes these vivid colors and simply combines them all in one dish? It would become a colorless muck! This is how a writer should think about his story when he writes it. Each character is a unique color and should not be “combined” with; (should not display behaviors of) “other characters” in order to make (her)him “three dimensional”.
This is how I see TV shows like OUAT. Every character was introduced as a vivid color. With (his)her own exciting personality trait that made (him)her a unique part of the story as a whole.
let’s start with the Mills Family: Regina is a character driven by passion. She is fire. Red. Hot. even a little crazy – as passionate people sometimes tend to be. Regina could be wonderful, or terrible – depending on what she is passionate about. This is why she is a fan favorite. This is why her redemption arc is the most satisfying and believable. If her passion is love – she will stop at NOTHING to protect her loved ones – even if it means ripping children’s hearts out (like in Neverland). OTOH, if she is passionate about revenge, she will stop at nothing – even if it will destroy HER – and even if the thing she is passionate about makes NO SENSE AT ALL like her anger at a 10-year-old. She can easily be blinded by her passion and be totally unreasonable, irrational and yes, crazy. When her passion is love and she doesn’t know how to love very well, she will be possessive and even abusive to those she loves. HOWEVER, if she is shown the way – if the people who love her show her how REAL love has to look like, she will sacrifice everything she knows and start to learn how to love properly – even if it means NOT having the people she loves with her.
Zelena, OTOH, is driven by envy. Seeing someone else HAVE something can make her crazy. It makes sense for a person with such a character trait to be all creepy with someone she fancies. Because other people’s feelings aren’t important to a jealous person, because they are so busy pitying themselves. Their own feelings of envy drown out everyone else’s feelings. It’s all about them. Which is what makes Zelena so interesting and brilliant in her own color. She’d rather no-one have it if she can’t have it. (like these boyfriends who kill their girl so that “no one will have her if I can’t”)
Their mother Cora is deliciously ambitious. She will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and what she wants is power within society. It might stem from a childhood where she was “stepped on” by society and she wants to change that. I would say she is driven by a combination of passion and jealousy and that she ultimately chose greed over lust by ripping out her own heart so that the object of her passion (or love) would NOT stop her from reaching her goal. A goal which is a result of envying the rich society. Cora being who she is added her own bright color to the canvas. Even her death didn’t undo who she was, because she realized that “love would have been enough” had she chosen passion over jealousy.
Pan is the typical selfish, lazy, bored man who refuses to face life and take responsibility. He doesn’t care much for people or power over them. All he wants is to sit on his ass or fly around his island and not care about anything. —-Until it gets boring. THEN he will use the companionship of “people” – but not as playmates – as playthings. Just something to keep him entertained while he flies around eating and drinking and satisfying his lazy needs. I think Pan’s character sees people’s suffering as simple entertainment. It doesn’t necessarily give him pleasure to watch someone suffer, but it entertains him, so he doesn’t mind it. His abuse of his son (kicking him while he was down, telling him how unloved and useless he is) wasn’t because he enjoys seeing his son suffer, but because his son got in the way of his own comfortable existence. He didn’t need Henry’s heart to become powerful over anybody, he didn’t try to kill Henry to HURT his family. He just needed it so he could continue to exist on his little island. Nothing personal.
Then there are characters like Hook. An exciting character who had a need to flirt and seduce every female within his radius. He was delightfully vibrant in color. He had ONE motive – to kill Rumple. Yet, when we see his initial interaction with his enemy – we are surprised that HE was the bully in that picture. And in THAT scene Hook was driven by the need to “pick” on the weak in order to validate his own good form and “willingness to fight” So, this fascinating narcissistic character, who was deeply hurt by his own victim, is now out to kill him. and he would do ANYthing to accomplish his goal. He changed sides every episode, and sometimes twice in one episode; attractively disloyal. How beautifully colorful! Every time Hook came on the screen the audience sat at the edge of their seat, thrilled to see what will happen next.
When vibrant characters like these suddenly don’t do what’s expected of THEIR character, when a womanizer is suddenly stuck to only one woman; when the untrustworthy suddenly doesn’t betray; when a bully suddenly leaves the other characters alone… he becomes boring and colorless. All his vibrant colors turned to one blob of muck. Suddenly Hook is just a waste of space in the large canvas of beautiful art. But his new, boring character becomes big and takes up even more space on the canvas, and not only that, OTHER characters suddenly lose THEIR vibrant colors too! Zelena becomes a loving mother, Snow becomes selfish, Rumple (Mr.-in-your-face-honesty) lies, Cora becomes someone who already gave up a child before she ripped out her heart… the show becomes one big mess of colorless muck! And the audience are just sitting there, horrified by what happened to such a beautiful painting of a show!
The topic ‘Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire’ is closed to new replies.